Anniversary's

I took Cassidy and Tanner to the doctor for their yearly checkup. I learned a few things:
1) I have healthy kids. Yes!
2) The next apointment I make will not be directly after work. The kids were DIRTY and we did not have time to stop and clean up. Poor doctor.
3)I have not been very good at the whole "yearly checkup" thing. Our last appointment was almost exactly two years ago when Cassidy was prescribed with pneumonia. Which made me remember.

Below is a letter I started when Cassidy and I were staying at Primary Children's Hospital.

Cassidy has been fighting an infection since the beginning of March. She showed symptoms when we visited DisneyLand. Her symptoms included shoulder pain, side pain, shortness of breath, a fever and an overwhelming urge to sit in the hotel. Missing Disneyland altogether.

We could not get her to leave the hotel. Nate and I took turns taking Tanner to Disneyland while the other stayed with her. Occasionally I could get her to go outside and sit by the pool but she prefered staying indoors. In her bed. She was so tired.

After two days of this, Nate took her to an instacare. They gave her a perscription for an inhaler and suggested we have her checked for asthma. Does asthma cause fevers, shoulder and side pain? They obviously did not know what was wrong with her and so dismissed the majority of her symptoms in order to focus on the one they knew; the breathing issue. We went against their advice.

The next day her symptoms relaxed and her fever broke. We were able to spend the last day of our trip to California in Disney Land. Nate and I took turns pushing her around in Tanners stroller. We flew home that night. It was a Thursday.

A week later, Nate went out of town for work and Cassidy complained mildly about being tired. Not knowing what to do, I waited. But by the end of the week, Friday, her shoulder and side pain came back and I took her to the family doctor. He prescribed a chest xray before diagnosing her with pneumonia. Apparently shoulder and side pain is a symptom of spinal or lung infection. I also learned that Utah has an agressive strain of bacteria that tends to evolve into pneumonia. The California instacare, perhaps, didn't know the symptoms of pneumonia to diagnose it properly. We started antibiotics on Saturday.

She then experienced a short lived relief of her symptoms, from taking the antibiotics, but by the middle of the third week her symptoms returned. I called the doctor again and made an appointment. He quickly looked her over and suggested we go to Primary Children's Hospital. I was relieved Leah had offered to take Tanner for the night.

Primary Children's admitted us quickly after a chest x-ray confirmed pneumonia. The week of antibiotics she took had no visible effect on the infection. At 12:35 am, on Friday (3/23/07), we entered her assighned hospital room and once again, I thought of Tanner. Happy he was well taken care of. Cassidy and I feel asleep for a few hours.

The next 18 hours felt like days. Cassidy went into sergery to have a chest tube inserted into her lung, Nate found a flight home, Family visited, and I played the role of parent; supportive, strong, understanding and hidden beneath a thin layer; scared. Scared not for her life but for the pain she was in. The pain I could not take for my own. It was hers and she handled it well.

At one point I went downstairs to eat and for the first time in days, I noticed other people; doctors and nurses, people visiting and parents of sick children. Parents identified by messy hair, wrinkled clothes, glassy eyes, and a florescent pink arm band for security. It was with the later that I noticed the most and took sympathy for. And then I realized I was one of them.

I wrote the letter late one night while Casi slept. The worst of what she would go through was over. I finally had time to deal with my own emotions and so I wrote a letter to help me sort things out. I guess I needed to talk about it. But, I found as I reached the emotional portion of my letter I could not write. I signed off the computer I was using in the common area and went to the bathroom and cried. I could, finally, allow tears. Cassidy came home 6 days later on March 29th, Her 10th birthday.

Today I celebrate healthy kids.